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Oporosi Mark
An Oporosi Mark is a powerful symbol, and sigil used in alchemy, and magicks. It is one of the main components of a "full soul" (people's souls, and animal souls), and is used to transmute food into energy. Erasing an Oporosi Mark does not destroy a soul, nor does it remove one's ability to eat. Erasing a golem's Oporosi Mark, however, does disable it. This is not true for homunculi. Tallmen, notably, possess neither Oporosi Marks, nor third eyes. Human Oporosi Marks are burned onto the inside of their third eyelid, or in the case of an absent third eye (an inability to use magicks), on the inside of their skull's skin. The name Oporos comes from the Mohaskian term for an Oporosi Mark, δράκων οὐροβόρος, drakon ouroboros, meaning "dragon devouring its own tail." To the Mohaskians, the Oporosi Mark was a powerful magickal symbol, which invading Farwesterners, and Sefenlanders took for their own after Aye the Queen. The word drakon in Oporosi is also the ultimate etymology of the word dragon in Lobott, and was ultimately left out of the term for an Oporosi Mark, which came to often be a black two-headed self-devouring sphinx, ''not a dragon. Interestingly this is reflected in biology, as after the symbol changed, so too did its biological counterpart. Members of the Oporosi Mages' Guild believed that human magickal abilities increased tenfold after the Battle of the World Tree, when dragons became less favored by the Mother Sphinx. Ancient vyzard legends which they had access to told the Tale of Two Sphinxes: ''Once a humble vyzard of the dust plains travelled into the lands of the north, and came upon a great sphinx* with the head of a man, and the head of a woman in a shallow of sand. He happened upon the beast in Izag*, and when speaking of it described it as having skin like coal and like oil and like ash*. The sphinx's womanly head told the vyzard that he could either turn back the way he came, or answer one of its two riddles to be given one wish, and free passage. The vyzard was very clever, and so agreed to answer the riddle. The sphinx's riddle was as so: "which creature has one voice and yet becomes four-footed and two-footed and three-footed?" The humble vyzard answered "man," and so the sphinx granted his wish, which was: "the answer to the second riddle." The sphinx answered: "wisdom & fire." The sphinx granted the man's second wish, which was: "wisdom & fire." On that day the wisewyrms, the great dragons of old who ruled all the world, had wisdom and fire stolen from them by man. The manly head of the sphinx bellowed "the riddle of thieves has been answered!" The great beast spit out 108 men who had failed to answer the riddle, and then ate itself, giving mankind magicks in turn. * * Sometimes erroneously described as the Great Sphinx of Caiaos * ** A Mohaskian name for the region around Caiaostopolis * *** Most likely in reference to blachumor This describes an event which occurred slightly after the Battle of the World Tree when the nameless gods of this Earth began to favor humankind, and gave it more, and more abilities. Category:Magicks Category:Biology Category:Cosmology Category:Alchemy